adrift
by blodreina
Summary: octavia's journey as she learns to both hold on and let go after the death of her brother.
1. Chapter 1

When Bellamy Blake dies, it is in an accident with the rover of all things.

Anyone who knows Bellamy would have told you in an instant that he would die a hero's death. A martyr's death.

It's absurd in a sense, or at least Octavia thinks so.

When her older brother dies, Octavia has hardly spoken to him in weeks. It has been even longer since she told him she loved him. She has only recently found herself able to look him in the eyes again without seeing Pike placing the gun to Lincoln's head.

He doesn't wake up so she can tell him goodbye. There is a part of her that almost thinks that if he had, if she had been able to beg him to fight it, he would have found a way. Bellamy always finds a way for her. The more logical part of her says that isn't true, but it easier to be angry about it than to hurt.

* * *

When Kane comes to tell her - _There was an accident. Miller crashed the rover. Bellamy is hurt. Octavia, Abby doesn't know if he's going to make it_ \- she hits him. It is a sharp blow, born more out of disbelief than anything else, that leaves a bruise on his face which lasts for days. The worst part might be that Kane does not even grow angry at her, but simply looks at her with _pity_ in his eyes. There's nothing worse than pity, not to her.

She doesn't believe him. She has to see it for herself. So Octavia follows him to the infirmary, expecting nothing but an empty bed and for Kane to have to explain why he had lied, but the sight before her causes her breath to leave her all at once. Bellamy.

Legs that now feel wobbly, almost like jello, carry her to the bed and she sinks down onto the edge of it, resisting the urge that has sprung up in her to shake him awake. Bellamy has never been so still. He always has a restless vitality about him, an urge to be _doing_. Working. He is a terrible patient, and for a terrible instant, she can't process this, can't understand why he hasn't shrugged off Abby's help and gone back to work.

When she looks at his face, she knows. It's the yellowish tint to his skin, the pinched look about the nose. It's a look she has grown all too familiar with since landing on the ground.

Bellamy is going to die.

* * *

Octavia sits with him for a while, and when her back starts to ache from the flimsy chair Abby had brought her, she curls up beside him on the bed. She tells herself that she's waiting for him to wake up, but it isn't true.

If he can just pull through the night, Octavia tells herself, if he can wake up, then she can make things right first. She can tell him that he is still her big brother and she still needs him. She can tell him that she loves him and that she never really stopped, but everything had just hurt so much when Lincoln died that it was easier to stop. He has to know that before he dies. He can't die thinking his sister hates him.

The naive little girl that still lives inside her whispers that if she can tell him that, maybe it will give him a reason to fight. Maybe he will pull through then, if he knows that she still needs him. Bellamy always finds a way for her, she remembers. He would do anything for her. He's told her a hundred times.

What she forgets is that life doesn't work like that.

I won't let anything bad happen to you.

 _But you are! You are!_ Octavia finds herself wanting to scream, staring at that agonizingly still face. _This is **bad** , Bellamy. You're leaving me. I don't want to do this without you. _

She doesn't _want_ to. Octavia needs him because she tried to do this without him. After Lincoln died she tried to pull all the pieces of her life together, but there were just so many sharp edges left when she was done. She could do this without her brother, she knows that now, but she does not want to.

* * *

Sometime in the night, she wakes to find that Bellamy is no longer breathing. She touches his hand, and it's cool beneath her fingertips.

He's gone.

Octavia knows that she should go find Abby, tell her, but the shattered pieces of her heart won't let her leave him. Not yet. So she simply curls up closer to him and lays her ear over his heart, straining to hear a heartbeat that has already fallen silent.


	2. Chapter 2

**[ A / N ] I posted the second part on A03 a while ago and never posted it here. Here it is.**

* * *

In the weeks and months after Bellamy dies, his presence seems to linger everywhere Octavia goes, in a way that Lincoln never did. Sometimes she swears that she can feel him at her back, trying to protect her as he did in life. Other times it's in the whisper of the wind, or the gentle caress of the breeze across her face.

At first, she welcomes it. As time wears on, she just wants it to stop. She thinks she can feel accusing eyes on her back - you let me die knowing you hated me. Why? Why couldn't you just forgive me sooner, O? it took me dying for you to want me around? he seems to be saying, until she wants to crouch with her hands over her ears and scream.

She says as much to Clarke one day, helping her to gather wood. Clarke just turns soft blue hues on her and asks her if she truly believes that - if she actually thinks that Bellamy would blame her, if he would be haunting her to hurt her. "Do you really believe Bellamy would ever do anything with the intention of hurting you?"

I have my own set of demons, Clarke's eyes tell her, and this is nothing compared to them.

There is a terrible moment where wild accusations spring to Octavia's lips - he killed Lincoln, he knew that would hurt me! - but she bites them back. Bellamy didn't kill Lincoln. He did things he shouldn't have, he allowed Pike to go on, but in her heart, she knows his intention was never to hurt her. It has always been the opposite.

Octavia goes to the stables and cries into Helios's mane.

Like it or not, her life is filled with ghosts now. Her mother, Lincoln, her brother. She's lost everyone and everything, and her demons have gone from being childish fears beneath the floor to ghosts that reside in her head.

* * *

It is a month before Octavia can look Miller in the eyes again without wanting to strangle him. Sometimes she blames herself for what happened to Bellamy, but other times, the blame rests squarely on Nathan Miller's shoulders in her eyes. He was behind the wheel of that Rover. He got distracted. _He is the reason she no longer has a brother._ Octavia has always, always needed someone to blame.

It will be even longer before she can forgive herself.


End file.
